Africa experienced one of its hottest years on record in 2024, with average temperatures soaring approximately 0.86 °C above the 1991-2020 average, new data shows.
According to a new report from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the past decade has been the warmest on record for Africa.
Highlighting Africa’s particular vulnerability to our warming planet, caused mainly by rich nations burning fossil fuels, the UN agency said that floods, heatwaves and droughts forced 700,000 people out of their homes across the continent last year.
WMO also noted that the El Niño phenomenon was active from 2023 into early 2024 and “played major roles in rainfall patterns” across Africa.
“Prolonged drought in Southern Africa led to widespread crop failures, food insecurity and significant humanitarian and environmental challenges. Critically low water levels in Lake Kariba, the world’s largest man-made lake, caused severe electricity shortages in Zambia and Zimbabwe, drastically reducing hydroelectric power generation, triggering prolonged blackouts and economic disruptions,” the WMO said.
In northern Nigeria alone, 230 people died in floods last September that swept across the capital of Borno state, Maiduguri, displacing 600,000, severely damaging hospitals and contaminating water in displacement camps.
Regionally, rising waters caused by torrential rains ravaged West Africa and impacted a staggering four million people.
Conversely, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe suffered the worst drought in at least two decades, with cereal harvests in Zambia and Zimbabwe 43 percent and 50 percent below the five-year average, respectively.
Heatwaves are also a growing threat to health and development and Africa, WMO said, noting that the past decade has also been the warmest on record. Depending on the dataset, 2024 was the warmest or second-warmest year.
Blistering temperatures already impact children’s education, with schools closing in March 2024 in South Sudan as temperatures reached 45°C.
Worldwide, at least 242 million pupils missed school because of extreme weather in 2024, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF.
Beyond education, rising temperatures across the continent are making Africa more water-scarce and food-insecure, with North African countries the hardest hit.
The report stated that sea-surface temperatures across the region reached record highs, with particularly
rapid warming in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
“Sea levels are rising at rates near or above the global average, except in the southern Mediterranean Sea, where the increases are significantly lower,” the report stated.
Exceptionally heavy rainfall and devastating floods affected multiple locations across Africa, according to the report, causing widespread fatalities, displacement and infrastructure damage.
In West and Central Africa, torrential rains impacted millions of people, with Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon and the Central African Republic among the hardest hit countries.
The 2023 positive El Niño phase and the 2023 positive Indian Ocean Dipole phase, both of which extended into early 2024, played significant roles in the extreme weather patterns observed in 2024.
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